Going Native in Siberia

and electrical plants. The Urquijo Bank ning of the Botanical Expedition could Party—Ed.] Conference in Bogota in apparently was in existence until 1948. be when Humboldt and Bonpland saw December 1982, I made a presentation the Southern Cross for the first time, on the Botanical Expedition, entitled Research Leads at which moment Alexander recited “Science vs. Environmentalism: The For purposes of investigation of the his- from memory the verses from Dante’s First Botanical Expedition,” where I tory of Spain and Ibero-America in this Commedia which refer to that constel- found a relationship between the inves- period, we would have to suppose that lation. tigations of Humboldt, and Leibniz’s the scientific, political, and cultural cir- I refer to this, because one of the New Essays Concerning Human Under- cle which received Humboldt in Madrid things that comes out in the chronolgy standing. I send this to you separately. It and other cities, minimally was related of the Humboldt voyage, is that in each would appear that “debt” is not only to or influenced by the Jewish intellectu- of the cities, he engaged in “typical Ger- monetary . al circle. The presbyter Cavanilles, man cultural evenings” (Havana, Cara- —Carlos Cota Meza Casimiro Ortega, Francisco Zea, Hipóli- cas, Bogota, Lima, and Mexico City, to Ruiz, Juan Bautista Muñoz, the Abbé among others), that of Mexico being 1. See Fidelio, Summer 1999 (Vol. VIII, No. Pouret, José Espinoza Tello, Felipe “without equal for New Spain.” I think 2). Among the several symposium contri- Bauzá, and Clavijo, the last the object of that this is important, and would be butions in that issue, David Shavin’s “Philosophical Vignettes from the Political powerful criticism from Goethe. more so if we could know what was Life of Moses Mendelssohn,” includes ref- Insofar as history is not chronologi- done at such “cultural events.” erence to the Mendelssohn circle and the cal, a good choice of date for the begin- In the PLAN [Andean Labor Humbolt brothers.–Ed. Going Native in Siberia he intent of The Shaman’s Coat is ed into “mini-states,” “native rights” Tpartly summarized on the very last movements, or other such methods of page, in which author Anna Reid community control. writes: Moreover, given that the Eurasian “It has been fashionable for a while Land-Bridge as proposed by Lyndon to think of all national identities as LaRouche intersects this geographic invented, to stress the artificiality of region, an informed reader might ask if treasured national symbols and inaccu- the agenda behind Reid’s book is to racy of not-so-ancient national myths. argue that the habits and cultures of the But the native Siberians are an example so-called “peoples” of the region must of the opposite phenomenon; of how be preserved, over and above the eco- hard it is to disinvent nationalities, of nomic development which would lead how they persist in the face of govern- to the ability of the human beings who ments’ best efforts at their destruction. inhabit the area to prosper. That is, as The Shaman’s Coat: To stretch a metaphor, the shaman has been seen in the case of Brazil’s A Native History of Siberia bowing in front of the Russian flying- Amazon region, is the intended use of by Anna Reid doctor is not donning his coat again, this volume, the fostering of indigenous Walker & Company, New York, because although he hid it under a suit movements opposed to Siberia’s eco- 2002 and tie for a while, he never really took nomic development? 226 pages, hardcover, $25.00 it off.” Reid’s emphasis here is revealed by Cultural Relativism the fact that she is a graduate of the Certainly, The Shaman’s Coat leaves no guides Reid’s quaint account of her trav- London School of Economics, and par- doubt that the ideology of cultural rela- els into Far Eastern Siberia, allegedly in ticipated in “bringing Russia into the tivism is alive and well at the London search of shamans, gifted healers, and marketplace,” or the world of free trade. School of Economics. It is this ideology, magicians whose powers allegedly out- As any review of the literature of the the theory that so-called “less-developed foxed even Stalin’s police. This is Reid’s London School of Economics reveals, peoples”—with emphasis on the term second such book; her first was Border- the looting of natural resources becomes “peoples” as opposed to “men,” as in “all land—the Nineteenth-century Russian more achievable if a population is divid- men (and women) are created equal”— imperialist name for Ukraine. 109 Eurasia: main routes and selected secondary routes of the Eurasian Land-Bridge Bering Strait: laid waste by the original Mad Baron, proposed tunnel connection to North America Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a wild- Murmansk eyed Baltic-German who loathed Jews Vorkuta Urengoy and commissars, believed himself to be a Archangelsk reincarnation of Genghiz [Khan] and Sergino Helsinki Yakutsk Stockholm St.Petersburg reputedly soaked his battle standards at Yekaterinenburg Krasnoyarsk Moscow Omsk his captives’ slit throats and upholstered Minsk Chelyabinsk Novosibirsk Skovorodino Rotterdam Berlin Chita Irkutsk Belogorsk his saddles with human skin. Bur- London Warsaw Komsomol’sk Vienna Kiev Paris Budapest Aktogay Khabarovsk NatsKom [the local political committee] Belgrade Almaty Harbin Sofia Tbilisi Madrid Istanbul Urumqi Beijing Vladivostok supported Grigoriy Semyonov, a half- Rome Baku Tashkent Ankara Samarkand Seoul Zhengzhou Buryat former officer in one of the Lanzhou Tokyo Tangier Algiers Tunis Beirut Teheran Mashhad Tel Aviv Lahore Lianyungang Osaka Delhi Chengdu Wuhan ‘native Cossack’ regiments, who raised a Cairo Zahedan Sukkur Myitkyina Kunming Only some rail lines in Northern Varanasi Liuzhou 2,000-strong army with Japanese help, Africa are shown here. Hanoi Nanning 0 1,000 2,000 kilometers stormed up and down the Trans-Siber- Khartoum Yangon Bangkok Phnom Penh ian in the armoured locomotives ‘Merci- Ho Chi Minh Eurasian Land-Bridge routes Lagos Kuala Lumpur Planned or proposed main routes less’ and ‘Destroyer’, and executed 1,800 Singapore Existing other lines Nairobi Other planned or proposed lines prisoners in five days near Kyakhta.” Jakarta EIRNS This is one of Reid’s only two notices Main and selected secondary routes of Lyndon LaRouche’s Eurasian Land-Bridge proposal. of that great infrastructure project. After reading that last page of The Reid laments the state of Kamchatka Ritual Euthanasia Shaman’s Coat, I had to look again at the and most of the rest of Eastern Siberia, Despite her bias, Reid does usefully offer dust jacket, to see whether Ms. Reid was but insists that only a people’s rights the reader a glimpse of the underdevel- an anthropologist, a sociologist, or an movement that has sprung up to enforce oped condition of native Siberians. Kam- ethnologist—that is, someone schooled the backwardness of the inhabitants of chatka, for instance, was one of the last in the bogus study of “lesser-developed” Kamchatka and Far Eastern Siberia, can places Reid visited, and she makes use of tribes, cultures, or “peoples.” Having possibly provide a solution. And, while the Nineteenth-century memoirs of trav- confirmed that she was none of the what the much-abused inhabitants of elers to the island, including Anton above, I can only assume her to be part Eastern Siberia really need is economic Chekhov, who was sent there as a doctor of the new generation of liberal imperi- development—roads, electricity, run- to the penal colony. She includes the alists, trained and certified in profiling ning water—Reid is more concerned account of how the Chukchi, who no the inhabitants of the former Soviet about being able to find “pure” mem- longer exist as a “pure” people, had adopt- Union, for the purpose of discovering bers of various ethnic groups, i.e., mem- ed ritual euthanasia in the absence of med- how these inhabitants could be yet again bers who have not intermarried. icine, it being considered an act of mercy manipulated by the City of London for a wife to strangle a sick husband. bankers, Wall Street, etc., into tying up The Trans-Siberian Railway At this time in history, what Russia’s the vast oil-, gas-, and mineral-rich Strikingly, Reid appears to be complete- Far East needs, is to increase the creative Siberian expanse. ly unfamiliar with the Nineteenth-cen- and scientific capabilities of every per- Reid’s sketches are very much remi- tury fight by the great Russian chemist son—person, not tribal member or niscent of Nineteenth- and early- Dmitri Mendeleyev and his collaborator, “peoples” member—who lives there. Twentieth-century British accounts of Count Sergei Witte, the Economics With more and more nations moving in travels to Russia, Belarus, and other Minister, Railway Minister and builder, the direction of Lyndon LaRouche’s parts of Imperial and Soviet Russia. and Prime Minister, to build up Russia, Eurasian Land-Bridge program—the She documents how Siberia was hard including the Siberian region. Witte, development not merely of new rail hit, first by the ravages of Stalinism, whose ideas developed under lines, but the infrastructure of cities, and then even worse by the effects of Mendeleyev’s tutelage, was the chief universities, hospitals, etc., to go with perestroika and the free-market reforms promoter of the infrastructural develop- it—Reid’s book is definitely out of step of the 1990’s. But, at the same time, ment of Russia, all the way out to East- with the potential that exists for human- what Reid is attempting to defend, for ern Siberia, and down into China. ity in this entire region.

Load more